This Friday, December 16, is the release date, in movie theaters and for Video On Demand, for Solace, a thriller starring Anthony Hopkins (Westworld), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Walking Dead), and Colin Farrell (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them). It’s a movie with an interesting past, especially when you consider that at one point it was meant to be a sequel to Se7en, the 1995 David Fincher vehicle that starred Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, and Gwyneth Paltrow, and gave new meaning to the phrase “What’s in the box?”
And the working title of Solace, back then? Se7en 2: Ei8ht.
Good God. Talking about dodging a bullet.
In Solace, Hopkins plays a retired doctor with psychic abilities who matches wits with Farrell, a serial killer with even stronger psychic powers. Now imagine William Somerset, Morgan Freeman’s detective character from Se7en, with those same powers, and you can see why Fincher passed on the crazy project.
(And who thought that releasing this movie, which apparently has been sitting on the shelf for at least a year, on the same day as Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was a good idea? That’s worse than the usual Hollywood move of dropping a questionable film into January or February and hoping for the best. And yes, I love you, but I’m looking at you, Underworld: Blood Wars and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter.)
What you probably don’t know, however, is that Solace wasn’t the only intended sequel to Se7en. Check out this Tales of Development Hell post from September 22 of last year—Se7en’s 20th anniversary—where I talk about the sequel novel I was once contracted to write for publisher Games Workshop: Se7en: Sins of the Flesh.
Mine didn’t have any psychic powers in it, but in retrospect that was probably a very good thing…
